Author: jabauer
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Scholar != Island
I am a NINES Graduate Fellow for 2009-2010, and this post was written for the NINES Blog. To see it in its original context, click here. I recently gave a presentation on letters as primary sources — their format, use in historical inquiry in general, role in my dissertation research (and database design) specifically, etc.…
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A Gem of A Letter
While working on People of the Founding Era: A Prosopographical Approach, I came upon an unexpected gem in the Papers of George Washington — a letter written by Washington to John Marshall on April 11, 1789. At the time, Washington was President of the United States and Marshall was the young (but promising) Virginia lawyer…
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Troubleshooting Rails Migrations
I’m not sure why this worked, but if it can help anyone else then here it goes . . . My rails app decided to throw a hissy fit at me by refusing to let me run rake db:migrate because (as it claimed) rake aborted! An error has occurred, all later migrations canceled: Mysql::Error: Table…
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Normality: For or Against?
I wrote this post a year ago, when the Scholars’ Lab Blog was just getting off the ground. To see the post in its original context (including the interesting conversation it sparked in the comments), click here. ****************** I’m a historian who is currently designing and/or building four databases. As I work through the complexities…
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Maiden Voyage
Welcome to the Maiden Voyage of Packets: Musings on Information Exchange, Historical, Digital, and Otherwise. Here you will find posts on a range of issues, including: history, database design, digital history/digital humanities, and web/graphical design. I will do my best to post regularly (read: twice a month), but I am currently writing my dissertation, so…